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We Happy Few is about drugs and Nazis and whatever we wish it to be

I didn’t know what We Happy Few was about, exactly, though in reduction than 90 seconds, we knew we wanted to know more.

A few months later, in a lost environment incidentally tied to a game’s story (OR WAS IT????), we got to play a diversion during Gamescom 2015. Instead of removing some-more excited, we walked divided confused.

At PAX East 2016, We Happy Few had a shot during redemption. we saw a revitalized chronicle and got some context, and that knowledge went most smoother. It’s turn a genuine diversion in a inserted months, and what we saw revived a seductiveness that a initial trailer sparked.

Now we know since we walked divided scratching my head, too. We Happy Few is a difficult diversion that poses hurdles and questions in equal measure. But we have to learn how to play it first.

Of schnitzel and confusion

In Aug 2015, we boarded a craft that flew over an whole sea and landed in Germany, that is a whole other nation with opposite disproportion for roughly everything.

A few days into Gamescom and forever orders of schnitzel later, we walked into a groundwork of a centuries-old church, where a integrate dozen Xbox Ones sat underneath a section roof and support arches. It was a kind of room I’d usually visited in video games. (Except better. Video games don’t have currywurst.)

As we wandered around a windowless room bright roughly wholly by a cold blue heat of TVs flashing video games, we incited a dilemma and saw We Happy Few. Someone sat personification on a low stool, and we watched over his shoulder as a diversion that looked only like a trailer unfolded. When he set a controller down, we picked it adult and started personification a diversion we was fervent to get my hands on.

That was a second time we saw We Happy Few. It was a initial time we played We Happy Few. My knowledge was tender and disjointed. we walked around with no clarity of purpose and no thought what to do.

As we explored a mostly dull town, we crossed paths with a few squalid masked characters. None were happy to see me. They embroiled and strike me. we ran away. They chased me. we didn’t know where to go or what to do. we could feel a line flourishing behind me, and we wasn’t removing anywhere. we set a controller down and left, not certain accurately what happened and no closer to bargain what We Happy Few was unequivocally about.

Last month, we flew to Boston, that is a city in a continental U.S. where people pronounce English, though some do it with a sold accent. At PAX East 2016, we got to play We Happy Few again.

This time, we sat subsequent to Guillaume Provost, Compulsion’s owner and artistic director. we told him about Germany, and he laughed in surprise. Someone was ostensible to be there to beam players by like he was about to do during PAX. With Provost during my side, we picked adult an Xbox One controller and played We Happy Few again.

What a disproportion a few months, a bit of context and a artistic executive make.

Of Boston and understanding

In a universe of We Happy Few, Nazis assigned Great Britain. The diversion takes place in 1964, about 30 years after a occupation, in a city called Wellington Welles. During a occupation, a adults — Wellies and Wastrels— had to do something deceptive and bad. To forget, they invented Joy, a drug that creates them feel improved and helps them forget.

You play as a Downer, an ancient of Wellington Wells who’s secluded Joy and warranted a madness of everybody else. Your mission: Keep guess to a smallest and hide your approach out of a dystopia.

No dual games will be accurately a same, since We Happy Few is procedurally generated. What we played in Germany looked identical to what we played in Boston, though it couldn’t have been a same. Every time we press start, We Happy Few incidentally generates the universe and inhabitants.